Just as the early development of the Web depended on code modules such as
libwww, W3C is devoting resources to the creation and
distribution of similar core components that will form the basis for the
Semantic Web. Our approach is Live Early Adoption and Demonstration (LEAD) --
using these tools in our own work.

The information and communication intensive environment of the W3C
provides challenges for effective scheduling. Tools that facilitate and
automate the process of calendaring and schedule management are increasingly
helpful towards a more effective, collaborative environment.

W3C Roadmap Diagrams
which illustrate, broadly, dependencies between W3C activities based on
RDF data representing these entities and their relationships. We expect
to integrate a number of related projects with these diagrams; see

The web provides the capability for anyone to say anything about anything.
Knowing who is making these assertions, is increasingly important in trusting
these descriptions. The Annotea
advanced development project provides the basis for asserting descriptive
information, comments, notes, reviews, explanations, or other types of
external remarks to any resource. Together with XML digital signatures, the
Annotea project will provide a test-bed for 'web-of-trust' semantic web
applications.

Real-time teleconferences are an integral part of the W3C environment,
in addition to sharing documents in the Web and engaging in e-mail discussions.
W3C augments voice teleconferences with simultaneous keyboard-based (irc)
communication, for the purpose of facilitating the flow of the meeting,
sharing URIs for items under discussion, and keeping meeting records.
Meeting preparation, meeting facilitation, and meeting recording present
opportunities for capturing data for the Semantic Web that is useful to
workflow analysis. The Zakim
and RRSAgent teleconference irc agents
are SWAD tools that give the teleconference audio system a presence in
the meeting irc co-channel and record the progress of the meeting.
Zakim provides control over the audio system as well as meeting chair
tools for agenda management, speaker (floor) control, and time management.
Zakim and RRSAgent together capture meeting data and make it available
in RDF/XML for other analysis tools.

See Also:

Oxygen collaboration technologies enable the formation of spontaneous
collaborative regions that provide support for recording, archiving, and
linking fragments of meeting records to issues, summaries, keywords, and
annotations.

Resources that are maintained on a Web server may be protected by
descriptive rules that express authority to access the document based upon
properties of the document in addition to properties of the requester.
Examples of this to date include W3C's RDF Access Control mechanisms for
supporting team, member and global accessibility. Further descriptive rules
are anticipated to support richer access control functions.

Proof that a meeting can occur at which the resources required to reach a
decision are able to be present will depend on the ability to identify all
the resources; including personnel, meeting facilities (room, teleconference
system), and prerequisite documents. Any participant can use this proof to
synchronize independent databases including personal planners. Proofs that a
meeting took place at which all prerequisites were met and a decision was
taken, become messages that state, for example, that a document progressed
from Working Draft to Last Call Working Draft.